So I've recently started reading Joseph Campbell's classic, "The Hero With a Thousand Faces", and while it's proving a phenomenal read, and seriously inspiring, it got me thinking about planning your story. I know it's very hip to do this, and I know people who are into that whole scene. Personally, I've never gotten it, however. I'm simply not able to sit down and write out the whole plot (often before even starting a story). I'm much more the sort who sits down, and sees where the keyboard will take them, and often enough, I love where it does take me.
And yet, I keep coming across all these modern writers saying they fill out complex character sheets, claiming that if you don't know your main character's favorite memory from when they were nine, you don't really know them. Well, I don't know. I somehow doubt that Hemingway or Shakespeare, or Tolkien (a big favorite when explaining the monomyth) sat down and wrote this shit down. And yet, Tolkien seemed to understand Aragorn pretty well, didn't he?
Obviously, Campbell's is more a psychological work, following in the archetypes laid out by Carl Jung, and it's not meant as a how-to for stories. Yet many modern day bloggers seem to regard it as such. I've come across numerous charts and story maps using precisely the Hero's Journey constructed by Campbell as a guideline for writing stories.
I can't help but feel that's cheating, somehow. And not the good sort, either. See, the way I see it, you either have it or you don't. And right now, being a writer seems to be very "in" with the Twitter and Instagram crowds. So I'm wondering if maybe, this whole plotting it out isn't just a comforting illusion.
I was reading this excellent article earlier, that argued against outlining your novel, explaining that often, the story ends up dead before you even write it out. Which is what I also believe. It also touched on the fact that many take this as a foolproof recipe. It's like - here, you fill out these little squares and write down that your MC's (by the by, I hate people who say "MC") "ally" is John, and boom, you've got yourself a bestseller.
Somehow, I can't think it's that easy. Seems to me that we live in a culture of overexplaining, and pansying around without ever getting your feet wet, and that's what this is, to me. First, you can easily occupy a couple of months "outlining", in which you get to feel like "a serious writer", without doing any of the actual writing. Second, it's convenient for avoiding the potential disappointment of realizing you can't actually write.
Obviously, I'm not saying all who plan their novels first are bad. Many are actually extraordinary writers. It's not a general rule, just like nothing is a general rule, in art. I just wonder if all this outlining and plotting isn't actually overkill.
So what about you, do you outline and plan your story ahead?
I should specify I'm talking about fiction here, mostly. It makes more sense that you'd plan out a non-fiction book.